Tech

SpotMini, Boston Dynamics’s dog-like quadruped robot, is back, and it’s learned a new trick. The robot, which was unveiled in June 2016 and then updated in November 2017, can now open doors and hold them open. While opening a door is slightly old hat for a Boston Dynamics robot – Atlas barrelled through a

Apple has bad news for their more than 700 million iPhone users around the globe. A version of the code that allows iOS devices like iPhones and iPads to boot-up has been leaked on the web-based hosting service GitHub. Apple just about confirmed the leak by sending GitHub a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown

A building in PyeongChang, South Korea is now the blackest building in history. The Hyundai Pavilion, designed by architect Asif Khan for the 2018 Winter Olympics, has been sprayed with one of the blackest pigments ever invented. With parabolic walls that stand 10 metres (33 feet) high, and 35 metres (115 feet) long, the

US military officials were recently caught off guard by revelations that service members’ digital fitness trackers were storing the locations of their workouts – including at or near military bases and clandestine sites around the world. But this threat is not limited to Fitbits and similar devices. My group’s recent research has shown how

The rise of smartphones and smart wearables means our days are more trackable than ever before, from the number of steps we take to the places we visit. Amazon seems very keen on the concept, having applied for a patent to keep very close tabs on its workers. According to the patent documents, Amazon

The rise of smartphones and smart wearables means our days are more trackable than ever before, from the number of steps we take to the places we visit. Amazon seems very keen on the concept, having applied for a patent to keep very close tabs on its workers. According to the patent documents, Amazon

Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, has issued a prediction that at least one or two of the country’s states will implement an Indian universal basic income within the next two years. Previously, the economist backed the idea in India’s Economic Survey for 2016-17. The concept of UBI has been

A new superconducting switch could soon enable computers to make decisions very similarly to the way we do, essentially turning them into artificial brains. One day, this new technology could underpin advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems that may become part of our everyday life, from transportation to medicine. Researchers at the US National Institute

A new superconducting switch could soon enable computers to make decisions very similarly to the way we do, essentially turning them into artificial brains. One day, this new technology could underpin advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems that may become part of our everyday life, from transportation to medicine. Researchers at the US National Institute

For years, researchers have known that carbon, when arranged in a certain way, can be very strong. Case in point: graphene. Graphene, which was heretofore, the strongest material known to man, is made from an extremely thin sheet of carbon atoms arranged in two dimensions. But there’s one drawback: while notable for its thinness and unique

For years, researchers have known that carbon, when arranged in a certain way, can be very strong. Case in point: graphene. Graphene, which was heretofore, the strongest material known to man, is made from an extremely thin sheet of carbon atoms arranged in two dimensions. But there’s one drawback: while notable for its thinness and unique

You know that smartphone batteries can be pretty dangerous things, right? Like, with all the fuss about those exploding Samsungs a little while back, surely people got the message that these unpredictable and potentially incendiary components aren’t something to mess around with? Well, in case you forgot about all that hoopla, maybe this insane

You know that smartphone batteries can be pretty dangerous things, right? Like, with all the fuss about those exploding Samsungs a little while back, surely people got the message that these unpredictable and potentially incendiary components aren’t something to mess around with? Well, in case you forgot about all that hoopla, maybe this insane

The driver had a blood alcohol content nearly double the legal limit and a tenuous relationship with consciousness when his car slammed into the back of a parked firetruck on Interstate 405 in Culver City. Still, he became maybe the first to add a technologically advanced new entry to the list of drunken driving

The driver had a blood alcohol content nearly double the legal limit and a tenuous relationship with consciousness when his car slammed into the back of a parked firetruck on Interstate 405 in Culver City. Still, he became maybe the first to add a technologically advanced new entry to the list of drunken driving

Facebook has invented a new unit of time: The ‘flick’, equivalent to precisely one 705,600,000th of a second – larger than a nanosecond, and smaller than a microsecond. It’s short for ‘frame tick’, hinting at its cinematic origins, writes original inventor Christopher Horvath on GitHub. As for why Facebook needs a new unit of time,

Facebook has invented a new unit of time: The ‘flick’, equivalent to precisely one 705,600,000th of a second – larger than a nanosecond, and smaller than a microsecond. It’s short for ‘frame tick’, hinting at its cinematic origins, writes original inventor Christopher Horvath on GitHub. As for why Facebook needs a new unit of time,

In a sci-fi feeling first, engineers at the University of Bristol used the world’s most powerful acoustic tractor beam to demonstrate that it’s possible to stably contain objects larger than the wavelength of sound. In other words, they were able to levitate objects notably larger than what’s ever been possible before; a feat that

In a sci-fi feeling first, engineers at the University of Bristol used the world’s most powerful acoustic tractor beam to demonstrate that it’s possible to stably contain objects larger than the wavelength of sound. In other words, they were able to levitate objects notably larger than what’s ever been possible before; a feat that

Recidivism is the likelihood of a person convicted of a crime to offend again. Currently, this rate is determined by predictive algorithms. The outcome can affect everything from sentencing decisions to whether or not a person receives parole. To determine how accurate these algorithms actually are in practice, a team led by Dartmouth College

Motion sickness on car trips is a long-standing problem, often affecting everyone but the driver. Since we’ll all be passengers in self-driving cars it might soon become even more of an issue – and so scientists have come up with a newly patented system to try and keep nausea at bay. The reason why

Genetically modified organisms could potentially do a lot of good for the world, like ending the spread of diseases, or maybe one day helping us grow more food to feed the hungry. There’s a big problem, though. When you release altered species out into the wild, how can you prevent them from breeding with

Ever since technological advancements made drones possible, people have warned of the potential dangers of weaponised UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), which could effectively become murderous slaughterbots we need to defend ourselves against. Now, it looks like those fears have become a reality. The Russian Ministry of Defence claims its forces in Syria were attacked

Lightyear One, a car whose ability to use solar power has been thought of as an impossible feat, just won a Climate Change Innovator Award. Designed by the Dutch startup Lightyear, the “car that charges itself” can supposedly drive for months without charging and has a 400-800 km range. But is a solar-powered car feasible?

A newly discovered prime number has broken the record for the largest ever found, coming in at a whopping 23,249,425 digits. It’s called M77232917, and it’s the 50th prime number of its type ever discovered. It’s called a Mersenne prime, which is found by multiplying twos together many times, and subtracting one from the

Silicon Valley is abuzz about ‘Meltdown’ and ‘Spectre’ – new ways for hackers to attack Intel, AMD, and ARM processors that were first discovered by Google last year, and publicly disclosed Wednesday. Meltdown and Spectre, which take advantage of the same basic security vulnerability in those chips, could hypothetically be used by malicious actors

People in Germany essentially got paid to use electricity on Christmas. Electricity prices in the country went negative for many customers – as in, below zero – on Sunday and Monday, because the country’s supply of clean, renewable power actually outstripped demand, according to The New York Times. How this happens The phenomenon is less

The biggest threat to an organisation’s cyber-security comes from within, according to a growing body of evidence. Employees are frequently putting their companies at risk of hacking by sharing their passwords, using public WiFi networks to send sensitive information, or not protecting the privacy of social media accounts. But there’s another threat that at

Elon Musk’s giant lithium ion battery in South Australia has responded in record time to the first power failure since it was installed as a back up power source. It comes just weeks after Musk won a $US13 million bet that he would supply South Australia with the Tesla battery within 100 days or it was free.

Kenshiro and his younger “sibling” Kengoro are two robots that were built with unprecedented similarity to human anatomy at the University of Tokyo. Their unique design make them able to move in ways looking closer to natural human movement than any preceding robot. In fact, Kengoro’s exercising ability likely rivals many human couch potatoes.

It happens all the time. A little red blip in Facebook directs you to a notification that a friend tagged you in a photograph somebody uploaded. The company rolled out the tagging feature in 2010, and all the photos since – the thousands, millions, even billions of them – were slowly building something. What that

If you’re like most of our readers, you’re probably reading this right now on your mobile, which means there’s also a chance you’re reading it on a broken, fragmented phone screen. Luckily, the days of squinting at cracked phone displays like this could soon be over, thanks to a team of Japanese scientists who

This month, bitcoin, the digital currency launched by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, hit a record price of US$17,428.42 per coin. It got its own futures market at a traditional brokerage firm, and it even earned a joke in a recent “Saturday Night Live” sketch. Perhaps because of its complicated technical design, zealous community of

When the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia granted a citizenship to Hanson Robotics’ female-looking robot Sophia, most thought it was just to appeal to the audience of the Future Investment Initiative. Well, it turns out that the whole affair was a PR stunt, as Hanson Robotics CEO David Hanson clarified with CNBC earlier this month.

Practical quantum computing has been big news this year, with significant advances being made on theoretical and technical frontiers. But one big stumbling block has remained – melding the delicate quantum landscape with the more familiar digital one. This new microprocessor design just might be the solution we need. Researchers from the University of

A new technique for recording image information onto a surface creates the ability for one space to contain multiple holographic snapshots, depending on how you look at it. With this new research, cramming numerous holograms without loss of resolution on the same material could open the way to some fascinating new applications. Holograms have

Forget about today’s modest incremental advances in artificial intelligence, such as the increasing abilities of cars to drive themselves. Waiting in the wings might be a groundbreaking development: a machine that is aware of itself and its surroundings, and that could take in and process massive amounts of data in real time. It could

The brain is really little more than a collection of electrical signals. If we can learn to catalogue those then, in theory, you could upload someone’s mind into a computer, allowing them to live forever as a digital form of consciousness, just like in the Johnny Depp film Transcendence. But it’s not just science

Anyone worried about the ability of artificial intelligences (AI) to mimic reality is likely to be concerned by Nvidia’s latest offering: an image translation AI that will almost certainly have you second-guessing everything you see online. In October, Nvidia demonstrated the ability of one of their AIs to generate disturbingly realistic images of completely

Chess isn’t an easy game, by human standards. But for an artificial intelligence powered by a formidable, almost alien mindset, the trivial diversion can be mastered in a few spare hours. In a new paper, Google researchers detail how their latest AI evolution, AlphaZero, developed “superhuman performance” in chess, taking just four hours to learn

People tend to adapt, capable of shifting towards one idea in favor of another as more information come in. True to the combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and human wisdom it functions on, Unanimous AI’s artificial swarm intelligence, known as UNU, is capable of this kind of adjustment too. Towards the end of November,

Scientists have developed new 3D-printed plastic objects that can hook up to Wi-Fi without the aid of any electronics or batteries, meaning household devices could get a lot smarter in the future without the need for any circuitry. If that’s not blowing your mind just yet, think about this: the tech could be used

Throughout history, humans have employed falcons as lethal hunters of other animals. Now those raptors are being sent after drones. It turns out that many of the skills feathered predators use to find a tasty lunch can be applied to the developing field of drone defence. A US Air Force-funded study by zoology researchers

China is now the proud owner of the world’s first all-electric cargo ship and has already put the vehicle to use. As reported by China Daily, the 2,000-metric-ton ship was launched in the city of Guangzhou last month and runs in the inland section of the Pearl River. Constructed by Guangzhou Shipyard International Company

Elon Musk’s Boring Company, which was founded to create tunnels for an underground transportation system in Los Angeles, has released a map illustrating a proposed network for those tunnels. The Boring Company was inspired by Musk’s frustrations with LA’s notoriously congested traffic. Operating beneath Interstate 105, the tunnels would hold large electric skates that could

In May 2017, researchers at Google Brain announced the creation of AutoML, an artificial intelligence (AI) that’s capable of generating its own AIs. More recently, they decided to present AutoML with its biggest challenge to date, and the AI that can build AI created a ‘child’ that outperformed all of its human-made counterparts. The

The full power of quantum computing remains out of reach for now, but we’re getting closer: physicists just packed 10 qubits on to one superconducting circuit, marking a new record in the march towards next-generation computing. While researchers have previously linked up to 51 qubits in the same computer, this is a new record for the

The Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) has developed new battery material, made from a “graphene ball,” which could potentially deliver charging speeds five times faster than today’s lithium-ion batteries. Samsung announced the new material in a press release this past Wednesday, November 28. But just how fast is this new material? Well, in theory,

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